


Sound of Madness

by riverchic1998



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Asylum, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-10-12
Updated: 2012-10-12
Packaged: 2017-11-16 04:31:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/535522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riverchic1998/pseuds/riverchic1998
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While investigating the mysterious deaths of orderlies at an insane asylum, Dean and Sam overhear a young woman tell of a world of demons and monsters with surprising accuracy. After digging deeper, they discover that she’s not insane like her family claims, but her mind is trapped between two dimensions.</p><p>They reluctantly agree to help her find her way back to her own reality, but when Buffy Summers realizes she can help the Winchester brothers fight the Yellow Eyed demon that has been terrorizing their family, she’s torn between her old, restricted life in Sunnydale and this new life of fighting evil on her own terms.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the LJ sncross_bigbang in 2010. The title and overall theme comes from Shinedown’s song Sound of Madness, available for download in my soundtrack post on LJ which can be found [here](http://renewing-minds.livejournal.com/4668.html).

The day started out like any other, except for a moment Buffy’s mind panicked at the thought of being in the insane asylum. Some days, it was hard to rationalize which world she was in, which place her body was in, but today was easier. Her mind knew where she was now. The sterile, white walls were a shock to her senses and she made her muscles relax with a sigh.  
  
The doctors had put her back in her room, thankfully not strapped down, because she had what they liked to call an “episode”. Her mind flipped to Sunnydale like a switch went off in her mind. There were no floating lights or a warning tingling in her fingers. One minute she was playing checkers with another patient and the next she was in the middle of a phone call to Willow.  
  
In the few days that she’d been aware in the asylum, she gleaned that these episodes hadn’t happened very often, but the doctors were worried about them becoming stronger and more frequent. A specialist had been in and out of the facility for days, questioning her, going over her charts, and even dragging her parents into her room so often that their visits were beginning to blur.  
  
Instead of being happy that she had her mother alive and father interested, Buffy was growing tired of the ache in her chest when their smiling faces appeared. She wouldn’t deny what she knew, but there was no way she could just pretend Sunnydale never happened, and that’s what her parents in this reality wanted. There was no forgetting the past six years of her life there.  
  
Voices whispered outside her room and Buffy brought her knees up to her chest, looking outside the barred, frosted windowed glass. The specialist was due back today and she really wasn’t looking forward to the analyzing stares and overwhelming pity that rolled off of him.  
  
The door was pushed open further and she heard two different sets of footfalls enter the room. One stopped at the doorway while the other walked towards her and around the edge of the bed.  
  
She had no interest in him and kept staring outside. She could barely make out the dulled green of the tree through the distorted glass. Her right hand clenched every once in a while. The tree reminded her of solid wood, the comforting memory of a rough-grained stake.  
  
In her peripheral vision, she saw a man in a black suit, which was different than the white lab coat the doctors wore. Buffy was in no mood for new faces and new tests. She remained stoic.  
  
“Is this some kind of joke? Does this chick know how to do anything but drool?”  
  
Buffy cracked a small Mona Lisa smile. These weren’t doctors because even through the most vulgar or amusing or downright strange patient tirades, they were always nothing but professional. If she had to guess, these two men weren’t a professional of any kind.  
  
“Sunlight, wooden stake to the heart, beheading, fire, holy water.”  
  
She saw the man closest to her physically jump. Unlike back in Sunnydale, she had perfected the calm and statue-like state that never ceased to make orderlies and doctors alike become startled when she spoke or moved. Buffy thought it had something to do with the drugs and her Slayer self-control combined.  
  
“Um, I’m sorry?”  
  
“Ways to kill a vampire. I know how to do that.”  
  
Buffy finally looked over at the man and then at the other man by the door. The one closest to her was shorter, but looked older. He was scruffy and had a rough aura about him. His head was tossed back and his chin raised, but his brow gave away his confusion. The younger man by the door was more interested in the other’s reaction instead of her.  
  
“Right,” the man said dubiously before holding out his hand. “I’m—”  
  
“Lying,” she said, looking from his face to his hand and then back up to his face. “I’ve done that enough to know when it’s being done to me.”  
  
He had plenty of confidence to him, but it was the wrong kind. Judging by the suit, he was trying to pass off as law enforcement or an investigator from some agency, maybe even a federal organization. She’d been around plenty of cops, good and bad, and soldiers. He held himself like a soldier, and one that had seen his fair share of fights.  
  
But, there was something off about him and especially the other man. Her slayer senses were still active in this reality, and while he didn’t feel like a vampire, he didn’t feel completely human either.  
  
The man turned to his partner. “She doesn’t seem that—”  
  
Suddenly, they were gone from her vision. The white walls disappeared as did the hard bed beneath her. Instead, she was sitting in her room, the green hue reflecting off of the comforter of her own bed. In front of her, Dawn was trying to sneak a sweater back into her closet, but that wasn’t what made her angry. The tell-tale purple stain on the front was the result of Codger demon blood, something they’d defeated a few days ago while walking home from the Bronze. She hadn’t noticed that Dawn was wearing one of her sweaters, but with the offending blood on it, she was caught red handed.  
  
“Dawn!” Buffy snapped, standing up and glaring at her. “How many times have I told you not to borrow my sweaters?!”  
  
There was a whisper in her mind, but she shook it away. The word insane, hung in the air.  
  
“Do you know how hard it is to get Codger blood out of clothing?”  
  
Just as Dawn opened her mouth to explain, Buffy felt a pull and she was staring at a wall back in the asylum  
  
The man snorted and Buffy snapped her head to face him. She could see both him and his partner now, and the tall one was staring at her like she was a curious puzzle he needed to figure out.  
  
“It’s impossible to get Codger blood out of clothing. It took me a week of scrubbing to declare my favorite t-shirt a lost cause.” Dean stopped before looking over at her in surprise. “Son of a bitch, how did she know that?”  
  
The other man finally spoke as he fully entered the room. “I told you, even if she may be classified insane, she knows the paranormal better than some of the hunters around here. She was admitted almost seven years ago but has still been talking about the supernatural like she’s living in another world. Her doctors say she built a fantasy world to cope with her illness.”  
  
His words, while logical, made her angry. Buffy started shaking, both in resentment and fear. “It’s not another world! This is another world!” she shouted, backing herself into a corner. “That demon skewered me and injected me with something and now my mom’s alive and my sister’s gone and I don’t know what’s real!”  
  
This would be what the doctors called a “breakdown”. They always came after her Sunnydale flashes. She got so overwhelmed that her body tended to shut down; at one point, she even threw an orderly who was trying to subdue her halfway across the room.  
  
Buffy took deep breaths and tried not to cry. Through her noisy inhalations, she heard one of the men talking. “Dean, what if she’s telling the truth? What if she was infected or poisoned by a demon and now she sees the supernatural?”  
  
“That’s a bit much, even for you, Mr. 'I can’t believe the Easter Bunny isn’t real.'”  
  
Buffy looked up, still gulping in air after her mild panic attack. The shorter man, Dean, was joking with his partner, who she was beginning to suspect was related to him. That just confirmed the thought that they weren’t officials of any sort in her mind.  
  
“Dude, I was seven.”  
  
A breeze drifted on the back of her neck and she shivered. A silvery wisp passed to her left and she let out her breath. It turned to a foggy mist in front of her. Buffy snapped her attention back to the two men.  
  
“Liar.” They both turned to her, expressions of confusion on their faces. She snorted. “You were eight.”  
  
Dean’s eyebrows went up. “Okay, now that’s just creepy.”  
  
Buffy was about to retort when her doctor stepped into the room and her mouth shut with an audible click. As she clenched her jaw, the doctor looked at the two men suspiciously.  
  
“Excuse me?” They turned around. “Do you have authorization to be in this room?”  
  
“FBI, doctor,” Dean said smoothly, giving the man an easy grin. She was right, in both ways. No FBI personnel would believe her when she talked about the demons and vampires of Sunnydale. “We were just seeing if anyone knew any more details about the orderlies that were murdered.”  
  
The doctor came into the room fully, his expression showing he didn’t really believe them. “Miss Summers is a patient in this institution and not fully aware of her surroundings. She is not a credible witness.”  
  
Buffy’s breath caught in her throat. They were here about the deaths of Orderly Mills and Orderly Vagner. Every patient knew who killed them, but dared not speak it because that would just give them more attention that wasn’t the good kind around here.  
  
The taller man stepped forward towards the doctor and nodded. “Understood, sir. Can we perhaps go to your office and ask you a few questions?”  
  
The cold chill came back over her. She’d stopped talking about the orderly deaths after the third time she was forcefully subdued via an injection in her arm to calm her down. But she knew that if she didn’t tell the men who claimed to be from the FBI about her, then she wouldn’t get a chance and they would get hurt trying to do something about the situation.  
  
Buffy took a deep, steadying breath. “It’s Annie.”  
  
The doctor sighed and went back into the room. “Buffy, we’ve been over this. There is no Annie.”  
  
“Buffy?” she heard Dean ask the other man a low voice, who just shrugged.  
  
“No, she’s here!” Buffy said loudly, trying to get their attention. They couldn’t leave without knowing. They would understand and they could help her expose the truth. “She’s the one doing this! They did it to her now she’s making sure they don’t do it to me or to any one else!”  
  
The doctor walked over to the hallway and leaned out, shouting for an orderly. When he came back in the room, he looked at Buffy calmly. “Buffy you need to focus. You’re in Brook Hills, not Sunnydale. There are no vampires here.”  
  
“She’s not a vampire!” Buffy said urgently, cringing when two male orderlies came in, one carrying a syringe. She was terrified that one of the times she received an injection it would be like when the Watcher’s Council tested her. She felt helpless enough without knowing she had her strength backing her up.  
  
“She’s a ghost. I can’t save her! She slips through my fingers like a mist but she doesn’t make them shoot their teachers or turn on the sad music. She’s invisible like the trip in the basement. I need a fever!”  
  
Her words became screams as the orderlies grabbed her, and she was injected with the sedative. She fought to stay awake and kept mumbling Annie over and over. The doctor grabbed her chart and started writing down the details of what happened.  
  
“Does she really think the cause of this is a ghost named Annie?” Dean asked the doctor. His voice was becoming distorted. Her head was fuzzy and it felt like she was swimming underwater.  
  
“Legally, I can’t tell you this, but for the sake of your investigation, I will tell you there is no one named Annie in this facility, and she has not had contact with anyone named Annie in the years she has been here. Two years after she came here, her hallucinations were decreasing.”  
  
Buffy tried to roll over to hear the conversation better. A cold shock over her bare skin made her adrenaline kick and she let out a small gasp.  
  
“According to her, she killed her vampire lover, Angel, sending him to hell. She ran away to Los Angeles where she adopted her middle name, Anne. When she says she can’t save Annie, she means she can’t save herself. She’s feeling guilty for not being able to break away from her hallucinations.”  
  
She wanted to scream to them that it wasn’t like that at all. These flashes weren’t hallucinations; they were real, but it was becoming harder and harder to differentiate between Sunnydale and here. If she was honest with herself, her will to go back to Sunnydale was also becoming less and less.  
  
As she finally drifted off to sleep, she heard the two men talking to the doctor as they left, dismissing the idea of the ghost named Annie.  
  
……………………………  
  
It was free rec time right after dinner, and Buffy was sitting in a corner looking out of one of the barred windows. She let her fingers drift along the bars, and she would periodically let her skin graze the cold glass. The doctors were happy with her progress because she hadn’t had a single episode since the two fake FBI agents visited. Buffy wasn’t sure how she felt about that. It was weird being in a mental institution with a ghost who was murdering orderlies in her spare time.  
  
At first, Annie’s spirit had scared Buffy. She didn’t do very well with floating translucent bodies, especially murderous ones, but after witnessing the death of an orderly herself, she heard what Annie had to say.  
  
Annie had been a patient who was molested and murdered by an orderly decades ago, and returned when the same thing was happening to patients again. Buffy had heard the rumors between muttered gibberish and locker-room talk between orderlies who thought she was catatonic. It sickened her, and she was torn between wanting to slam their heads into the walls or call for help.  
  
So far, none of the men had tried to come after her, but she wasn’t sure if that was because Annie had taken a liking to her and they somehow sensed it, or because she could still do some damage to them if she wanted.  
  
Buffy was torn from her thoughts when she saw headlights on a car driving by suddenly flip off. She peered out curiously, but when her face got close to the glass, it frosted over, much more than it normally would if she breathed over it.  
  
Just because Annie liked to help didn’t mean that Buffy was used to the shocking cold that came from being around the spirit. “Annie?”  
  
If there was any sort of reply, she didn’t notice because she saw two shadows sneaking across the grounds. The two fake FBI agents. “What are they doing here?” she whispered to herself.  
  
In the frost over the glass, words were being written out. Buffy couldn’t help her reaction; she took a sudden, deep breath and leaned away, trying not to call attention to herself or the ghostly writing on the window.  
  
HERE TO KILL ME  
  
The words disappeared as soon as Buffy read them, but she was more confused. “You’re already dead. Why would they want to kill you again?”  
  
TO STOP ME  
  
That scared her more than she would like to admit. Even though she still had some of her strength, with one well-placed needle, she was weak and helpless, and those orderlies knew that.  
  
“They don’t know the story though. Maybe if we can reason with them…”  
  
She trailed off when another message appeared.  
  
WE DO NOT REASON WITH HUNTERS  
  
Buffy sat back and tried to figure out what Annie was telling her. “Hunters? Ghost hunters? And all they know is that you’re killing people.” She shook her head. “Please Annie, if they destroy you, those guys won’t stop.”  
  
Even though no other messages were written, Buffy knew she was still there. A chill had settled into the corner. “Please, Annie,” she pleaded.  
  
The message on the window disappeared completely and frosted over.  
  
FINE  
  
She let a small smile come over her face. “What do I do?”  
  
RUN  
  
Buffy was confused for a few moments before a group of patients in the opposite corner all started screaming and turning over furniture as they tried to move away from each other. All the orderlies immediately rushed over, and the doctor on the floor grabbed some syringes. She took a deep breath and quickly walked past, trying not to draw attention to herself.  
  
Once out of the room, she was able to maneuver through the halls, thanks to Annie’s help and the cold leading her away from the commotion. Buffy knew where they were headed; she knew the two men had gone in by the isolation ward. It made sense. The iso ward was big and there were hardly ever any patients locked in there on the weekends due to short staff.  
  
Buffy slowed her brisk walk, her unused muscles starting to protest, but she heard voices up ahead. Slowly, she crept towards the corner where the halls intersected.  
  
“I can’t believe you want to reason with the ghost, Sam.”  
  
She recognized that voice belonging to Dean, and finally had a name to go with the face of the other, taller man.  
  
“Well, it’s either that or let it kill off the staff, so I’m pretty sure we’re stuck doing this.”  
  
“If they really are going after the girls, why not let ‘em get hacked to pieces?” There was a sound of someone hitting someone. “Dude! I was joking.”  
  
“It doesn’t matter. We need to focus. How are we going to confront this spirit with orderlies and guards patrolling?”  
  
“That’s the easy part.” Dean walked over to a fire alarm, pushed the cover up, and started to pull the red bar down.  
  
“No! Dean, no, no!” Sam hissed. “They don’t do a full evacuation when the fire alarm is pulled!”  
  
Buffy looked around the corner and saw Dean about to pull one of the fire alarms and Sam holding two duffel bags with a panicked look on his face.  
  
“Well, that’s stupid,” Dean said, taking his hand off the red bar. “Who the hell doesn’t do a full evac when a fire alarm goes off?”  
  
“A place full of mentally insane people. They know the difference between when the alarm is pulled and when it’s triggered by a smoke detector. Too many patients could lift the box and pull the bar down.”  
  
Dean shuffled his feet a bit. “I’ll give you that, but my plan would have worked beautifully.”  
  
“We’d be wet and spiritless, trying to talk our way out of a horde full of crazy people. Your plan would have screwed us over,” Sam said patiently. Buffy got the impression that Dean’s plans would have screwed them over plenty of times. “The only way the institute does a full evacuation would be if smoke detectors or fire alarms go off in multiple locations. Otherwise they only close off sections.”  
  
Buffy turned back around the corner, the cold air around her alerting her to Annie’s presence. “Think you can accommodate?” she whispered, and the chill was instantly gone.  
  
“We need to confront this bitch and in order to do that, we need to be alone with her. How do we set off the alarms at multiple locations then, genius?” Dean asked sarcastically.  
  
No sooner had Dean asked the question before the overhead sprinklers went off and she could hear blaring alarms going off in at least three different places. Buffy grinned and peeked around the corner again.  
  
“I think someone feels like a Chatty Cathy.”  
  
For his remark, Dean was thrown into a wall, dropping the duffle and shotgun he’d been carrying. Sam raised his own gun only to have it ripped from his hands. “Dean?” he shouted.  
  
Buffy felt herself pulled backwards, but it wasn’t because of Annie. One of the patrolling guards had seen her and was pulling her back. His hand covered her mouth and panic started to set in. He wasn’t going to take her back to the group; he was using the alarm as a distraction.  
  
She could still hear Sam and Dean around the corner, but couldn’t yell for them. “Son of a bitch. Someone woke up on the wrong side of the padded cell. We need to trap her, lay down some salt lines.”  
  
Buffy felt the guard freeze at the sound of the voices. He kept a tight hold on her as they went to the edge of the corner so he could look at the two men. Normally, Buffy would have been able to fight him off, but the running had tired out muscles that she hadn’t used so hard in a long, long time.  
  
“The water will wash them away and we won’t be able to get a decent line down before she comes at us.”  
  
“And why exactly is she coming at us again? We didn’t do anything.”  
  
The guard was ripped back from the corner and his hold was so tight around her, she went flying with him. This time, it was Annie who had yanked him back, and Buffy quickly crawled away, the wet floor making it hard to use her hands to backpedal.  
  
Water suddenly started rushing over the guard, more water than was possible from the sprinklers. He grabbed at his face, but the water slipped right through his fingers.  
  
Buffy struggled when she felt more hands grabbing for her.  
  
“Hey, hey, it’s just me!”  
  
She tried to take a few deeps breaths to calm the panic as Dean helped her up and he put himself in front of her. Sam did the same. She’d never noticed how tall he was, and she was having a hard time seeing around him to see what was happening. When she did, Buffy’s eyes widened. The guard was lying motionless at her feet, and she slowly walked towards them.  
  
This Annie was different than the ghost that usually appeared for her. Her black hair was slightly tousled and her white gown was ripped and dirty. The ghost’s skin was the usual pale gray and her eyes were black.  
  
The spirit stopped before the two men. For a few moments, she just stared at them, not blinking or moving. Buffy saw Dean tighten his grip on the shotgun in his hand, and Sam had an iron bar in his grasp.  
  
“Um,” Dean began, “hi?”  
  
A slow, monstrous smile spread across her face, revealing rotten teeth.  
  
Dean started to make a face at the sight but was quickly shoved by the ghost and went flying through the air to skid on the wet floor. He groaned as he sat up. Buffy fell to the ground again and tried to get over to the wall. Annie said she was going to reason, but this looked like the type of reasoning Buffy did with Willy to get answers.  
  
“Sam? I think it’s safe to say she’s a pretty pissed off spirit that doesn’t want to reason!” Buffy looked over to see Annie holding Sam up off of the floor with a hand around his neck. “Yeah, I think you got that memo.”  
  
As he got up, Dean started grumbling, “Since when do we ever tangle with the nasty ghosts? Let’s reason with it, he says.” He picked up his shot gun, cocked it, and aimed it right at Annie’s head. “C’mon, sweetheart. Put him down nice and easy.”  
  
Buffy was about to shout out not to shoot Annie when a cold calm settled over her. A soft voice brushed on the air next to her cheek, and she turned towards it. This was how Annie talked to her, and hearing a voice in her head was still strange.  
  
This is what you wanted, so we’ll do it your way. We’ll reason, but I need you to do the talking for me.  
  
Buffy froze. She wasn’t exactly sure how that was supposed to work and possession wasn’t her cup of tea. “Are you sure? Why can’t you just make their voice appear in their heads?  
  
Because you are living a half-life, I can communicate through you. They wouldn’t be able to hear me. Do you want this to happen or not?  
  
With a shaky breath, Buffy nodded. She stood with a shiver and everything snapped into sharp focus. At times things gained a double edge and it almost made her dizzy, but she squashed the nausea and continued on.  
  
She walked over to Dean and stood on the other side of Annie so she could see Sam and Dean both. Dean was looking at her curiously, cautiously; Sam was still trying to breathe.  
  
Annie slowly turned to look at him. Buffy opened her mouth as she was spurred to talk, the ghost’s words coming out in a dull tone. “I’m already dead, you moron. You really think shooting me is going to help?”  
  
Dean looked at Buffy before narrowing his eyes. “Really? You’re using her to puppet? What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?  
  
The ghost didn’t grin, but her grip on Sam didn’t loosen either. Buffy was getting more and more nervous. Annie still had Sam pinned against the wall and as much as she wanted to help him, if Annie wanted him there, nothing Buffy could do would get him down. She was spurred to start speaking again. “Buffy wanted to help. For some reason, she likes you boys.”  
  
Dean smirked lightly. “My brother is turning blue and I’d really like it if you set him down now.”  
  
“I’m not going to stop. You can’t make me.”  
  
Even though she said the words, Buffy didn’t know if Annie was talking about putting Sam down or killing the men who used the women of the asylum. She hoped it was the latter.  
  
“I just want you to put my brother down,” Dean said firmly. “Then we can talk about the other problems we seem to be having.”  
  
Annie narrowed her eyes at him. Moments passed and Sam’s struggles were getting weaker and weaker. Buffy could see that the more Annie tried to delay this, the less they’d be willing to talk. Not knowing if this voice thing was a two way street, Buffy thought hard, You promised,. Dean was about to squeeze the trigger when Annie vanished and Sam fell to the floor, coughing and rubbing his neck. Buffy let out a sigh of relief.  
  
Dean crouched down to make sure Sam was coming back to consciousness, and Buffy felt relief flood over her. “How’s that ‘reason with the ghost’ theory coming, Sammy?”  
  
Amidst his coughs, Buffy could make out Sam muttering, “Screw you.” Dean chuckled and went to pick up his gun, but it was gone. She hadn’t noticed it go missing.  
  
“Uh, Sam? We might have a problem.”  
  
Sam seemed to realize that right as Dean did. “Where’s all our stuff?”  
  
Both brothers jumped when the water suddenly shut off and Annie appeared standing before them, looking cleaner and more put together than she had earlier. This was the Annie that Buffy knew, less intent on scaring them, and more focused on speaking with them.  
  
Buffy was much more willing to speak the ghosts’ words now and willingly turned to them. “You don’t need guns and salt to have a talk, boys. Say your piece and be gone.”  
  
“Someone cleans up well,” Dean remarked.  
  
“People respond better to grotesque and unkempt images.” The ghost smiled icily, but Buffy’s expression never changed, staying neutral. “People must be terrified of you. Now speak.”  
  
When Sam looked at him, Dean held up his hands and surrender. “Oh, hell no. This is your little tea party. You can do the talking.”  
  
Sam sighed, rolling his eyes, and looked up at Annie. “We know why you’re doing what you’re doing, but you can’t go around killing the orderlies.”  
  
Annie cocked her head with a small grin.  
  
“They did it to me.”  
  
Dean snorted. “She’s got you there, dude.”  
  
Sam glared at him before turning back to Annie. He started to stand, the slippery wall not helping his balance much, but he finally got back on his feet with Dean following. “Annie, if you’re killing them, it doesn’t make you any better than them. You’re just stooping to their level.”  
  
Annie crossed her arms in irritation. This time, Buffy’s mouth twitched into a small grin. With the ghost in her mind, she understood Annie’s reasoning. It wasn’t about being better than the orderlies or stooping to their level. It was about the safety of the female patients. When Buffy glanced at the ghost out of the corner of her eye, she noted Annie looked remarkably like Willow did when Xander was being inappropriate. “And I thought the short one was the ignoramus.”  
  
Dean’s brow furrowed. “Why do I get the feeling I was just insulted?”  
  
“Because you were,” Buffy replied, her expression back to normal. “I’m not doing this for revenge. I’m doing it to protect the people here. No one protected me, so someone has to do it.”  
  
Buffy’s hands start to shake at the end, but she couldn’t tell if it was from fatigue or fear. Her eyes flicked over to the still motionless guard. She couldn’t see if he was breathing, and couldn’t bring herself to honestly care.  
  
“Then call the police or something. These orderlies haven’t killed anyone.”  
  
“Yet,” Buffy hissed, and Sam and Dean looked at each other in surprise. The ghost flashed out of their sight only to appear suddenly right before them and they both leaned back against the wall. Her expression was fierce and held more grief than hatred. “The orderlies didn’t start out by murdering people when I was alive. The only reason they did it was because I fought back. I was two weeks away from being released and they knew I’d go straight to the lawmen.”  
  
Sam sighed. “There are cameras now. With the security systems, you have your proof.”  
  
“You think I haven’t thought of that?” Buffy replied, and Annie stepped back from them. “Two of the guards are in on the fun.” She pointed to the body to their right. “Well, he was.”  
  
“There were no reports of a guard being murdered,” Dean said, looking to Sam for confirmation. “Did you ice them both tonight?” They both looked back to Annie, who grinned wickedly at them in confirmation.  
  
“This one’s drowned before he could destroy all of the tapes that proved the cameras were deliberately turned off the nights the orderlies would attack the patients. Your idea of the fire alarm was brilliant, Dean. All of that nice water to flood their lungs.”  
  
Dean looked over at Buffy carefully. “Did they ever…” he trailed off, and the ghost turned to look at Buffy as well. It was strange to hear the ghost’s thoughts in her mind but have that gaze focused on her so intently.  
  
“No. She’s retained her strength from the other reality. If she wanted, she could hurt them. They know that and leave her alone.”  
  
Sam turned to Annie shock. “Wait, what do you mean she’s retained her strength? Are you saying she’s actually split between this reality and another one?”  
  
Annie slowly turned back to them, rolling her eyes. “That’s the only reason I can speak through her.”  
  
Both Annie and Buffy suddenly turned their heads to the left just as the alarms turned off. “They’ll notice she’s missing. She’ll be in trouble, but she broke away when she realized you were here. You need to leave, or they will question your involvement.”  
  
Dean swore when their equipment and guns suddenly appeared before them, and the heavier bag dropped on his foot. Sam stepped over the bags and toward Annie. “Wait, you have to tell us more about the realities. Buffy can’t stay aware long enough to help us.”  
  
“How about we forget about the nutcase and do our job to make sure you don’t start killing any more people?” Dean snapped, picking up the shotgun and aiming it at Annie.  
  
It didn’t matter that she was just the puppet as Dean put it, Buffy knew that Annie was crucial here. She quickly stepped in front of Annie. The spirit had held up her part of the deal, and Buffy wasn’t going to forget that.  
  
“Using a human shield? Classy.”  
  
“It’s me,” she said, trying to focus her vision again and calm her stomach. Getting possessed like that wasn’t a fun trip. “She can’t control my body, but I can speak for her. I hear the words and say them. She won’t kill any more guards.”  
  
Dean leaned around Buffy to the ghost, who grinned and nodded. “You won’t kill any more guards. Just like that?”  
  
“Kill? No,” Buffy replied, slipping back to speak for Annie. The double vision was giving her a headache. “If they try this again, I don’t guarantee they won’t run away from this place screaming.”  
  
Dean still had the gun aimed and ready, but dropped his shoulders and pointed the barrel at the floor. “Good enough.”  
  
“She’s going to be weak. Her vision isn’t steady and her body is fatigued. Make sure you catch her and make her comfortable.”  
  
With that, the ghost vanished, and true to her word, Buffy started to sway on her feet. The sudden loss of the spirit in her mind was like the shock of cold water being poured on her. Dean still had his shotgun, so Sam was the one who reached out for her. “That was a trip.” She felt her eyelids drop and it was almost like being drugged all over again. Her muscles were weak and it was so hard to stay awake.  
  
Sam looked up at Dean. “What should we do? Should we take her with us?”  
  
“It’s going to be hard enough to get out of here without being spotted. Put her on the floor and let’s get out of here. With that dead guard and her knocked out, we’ll be in more trouble than it’s worth.” Sam looked torn, but Dean put his foot down. “Now, Sammy. We gotta go.”  
  
The last thing she remembered was Sam trying to make sure she was comfortable on the wet floor, but when voices started coming from the end of the hall, he grabbed his bag and raced out after Dean.  
  
She let the darkness take her, knowing Annie was still around, a dirty guard was put down, and Sam and Dean got out safely.  
  
………………………  
  
Buffy sat up in bed, shivering as a sudden cold overtook the room. She pulled her legs up so her knees were tucked under her chin, and a fog formed when she let out a shaky breath. Buffy undid the clasp on her cross necklace and held it tightly in her hand. A cold wind swept through the room and after taking a few deep breaths, Buffy closed her eyes tightly.  
  
When she opened them, Annie was sitting at the end of her bed, and Buffy let out a sigh, her tense muscles loosening. “Annie, what are you doing here? You promised Sam and Dean you would leave.”  
  
And I also said that if someone needed my help, I’d come back. The only thing I promised those boys was no more bloodshed and killing when it came to the bastards that take advantage of us.  
  
Buffy sighed, trying to keep focused on the transparent spirit who floated cross-legged a few inches off of the sheets. The voice echoed in her head much like Willow’s did sometimes when she was magically powered up. “So what’s wrong, Annie? Who’s in trouble?”  
  
You are, baby doll. Annie gave her a small smile. You’re not supposed to be in here. You’re like those boys. You need to be out helping people, and God knows those boys could use a woman’s help.  
  
They really could. Annie told her all about the infamous Winchesters and what they hunted. It sounded so much like her slaying, and she hated how they got started in the business. But with their knowledge and hers pooled together, they’d make a great team. They were all kindred spirits.  
  
Together, the three of them could do a lot of good, because they each had their strengths that complimented each other. “I’m not going to get released overnight, especially since I escaped to help them. They know I ran and they think I’m the one who pulled the alarms. I’m not going to be of help in here.”  
  
Annie’s grin widened. That’s where I come in.  
  
She really didn’t like the sound of this. “Annie,” Buffy said in warning.  
  
Oh, you just hush. I’m not going to hurt anybody. I can get the doors opened for you and make sure no one follows. You can swipe some clothes from laundry and let’s just see if we can empty some pockets of the more dirty orderlies.  
  
Annie’s grin took on a wicked curve and Buffy sighed. She promised she wouldn’t hurt anyone, but Annie was not trusting of any orderly in the asylum now. Buffy didn’t want this turning into another massacre. She accepted that Annie would haunt the asylum now, there was no way she would ever leave, but she needed to be here for the patients’ protection. Annie didn’t need to let herself descend to angry spooking.  
  
You need this, Buffy. You’re not doing anyone good in here—not to the outside world or to yourself. If you stay here, you really will lose your mind. You’re not the first person who was trapped between two realities, but you are the first person I’ve seen who is strong enough to beat it.  
  
Buffy looked down. Since helping Sam and Dean, her relapses into the Sunnydale reality were fewer, but they still happened. If she stayed here, she would probably relapse more. Escaping felt like it would be nice. Maybe if she left here, she could stay in one reality.  
  
“I don’t know which one to choose.”  
  
She shivered when the ghost put her hand through Buffy’s own. If you stay, you won’t be able to make a choice at all.  
  
Buffy nodded, knowing the words to be true. “Then let’s do it.”  
  
………………………  
  
Dean and Sam stared at Buffy as she stood at the doorway to their motel room. She was wearing clothes that were too big for her and didn’t match at all. Her hair was tousled and dirty, and her face had a scratch on it. Escaping, even with Annie’s help, hadn’t been an easy task. She was tired, her muscles were overworked, and she would kill for a bite of real food.  
  
“Buffy?” Sam asked in shock. “What are you…” he trailed off, looking her up and down. “Were you released?”  
  
She didn’t explain. “Can I come in?”  
  
“How did you know where our motel room was?” Dean asked, leaning outside slightly to check for anyone that looked like they were tailing the brothers.  
  
“I caught a cab. No one followed.” Buffy walked in past Sam and Dean, looking around the room as if she’d never seen a hotel room before. “I followed the whispers. They told me where you are.”  
  
As Sam closed the door, Buffy heard Dean lean over to Sam to whisper, “Dude, I think we need to take her back. She’s still whacked out in the head.”  
  
“I’m not,” Buffy interrupted, turning on her heel to face them. “I know that I’m split between two realities. I guess because I’m not in one completely, I can hear and see ghosts that normal people can’t besides Annie.”  
  
“All right,” Dean said, putting down the shotgun he’d picked up when Buffy knocked on their door. “I’m one of the last people who would knock ghost theories out of the water, especially after the hell of a trip we were just on, but you need to go back.”  
  
Buffy sat on the bed, and hoped they knew that even though she was petite and still wasn’t up to normal strength, she would go kicking and screaming back to the asylum.  
  
Sam came to her rescue. “Dean, we can’t make her go back. You saw what they did last time.”  
  
“She said you’d understand,” Buffy whispered, looking at Sam with tears in her eyes. “She said you’d be the one to help me.”  
  
Sam was visibly shocked by her statement. “Who? Who told you? Who led you here?”  
  
One second she was about to answer their question, and the next she was leaning forward, rocking with her palms smashed against her temple, whimpering. Sam caught her and helped her up onto the bed. After taking a few deep breaths, she stopped shaking. “Sorry. Just had a flash to… to the other place.”  
  
“Sunnydale, right?” Sam asked gently as he sat down next to her on the bed. Dean glared at him for delving into it, and probably for not sending her on her merry way, but he just shrugged.  
  
“Yeah. The flashes didn’t happen for me here until the demon in Sunnydale poisoned me. Since then, I’ve been floating in and out of places.” Buffy shook her head with a wince. “Do you have any aspirin? My head’s killing me.”  
  
Sam looked up at Dean expectantly, who just stared back. “What?” Sam rolled his eyes and got up to start digging through the medical bags. When he brought back two Advil and some water, Buffy stared at pills in her hand for a moment.  
  
“If you guys really want, I’ll leave,” she said slowly, not looking at either of them. “I just… I need some good sleep without guards checking on me every half hour and without screaming crazy people.”  
  
Dean looked torn between telling her to leave and letting her stay a night. “You can stay, but what’s to stop you from offing us in the middle of the night?”  
  
Buffy looked up at him strangely. “I don’t kill people.”  
  
“That’s right. Only vampires,” he replied sarcastically as he began to pace.  
  
“Dean,” Sam reprimanded softly.  
  
“I’ll go in the morning, but Annie thought I could help you—”  
  
Dean stopped pacing and turned around, his expression reflecting his disbelief. “Annie? I thought we got rid of that damn ghost when we left!”  
  
Buffy shrunk back when Dean started yelling. “We didn’t get rid of it. She just said she wouldn’t kill the guards.”  
  
“She helped me escape.”  
  
This time, Sam and Dean both stared at her disbelievingly. “Escape?” Dean echoed. “You mean you didn’t get released? So now we have the mental patient tagging along for kicks. That’s just great. Fan-frickin’-tastic!”  
  
Buffy flinched again and quickly took the pain medication Sam gave her.  
  
“She has nowhere to go,” Sam pleaded.  
  
“She’s an extra mouth to feed.”  
  
“She is right here,” Buffy said, looking between them. “Just get me out of the state, and I’ll find my way, all right?” It was going to be hard. She didn’t know anyone in this reality besides her parents, and as much as she would love to run home to her mom and dad, she didn’t know if she’d survive seeing Joyce alive and holding hands with Hank like they'd never fought, like he’d never run off with his secretary to Spain. Dawn wasn’t there, and neither were any of her friends.  
  
Buffy just wanted a reality to be real and to stay that way. Her face crumbled as she leaned forward again, only to be shocked when a small, feminine hand was laid on her shoulder. Her head shot up to look at Willow’s worried face.  
  
“Buffy? Are you all right?”  
  
She straightened and looked around. She wasn’t in a hotel room with Sam and Dean. She was in her own room. “Headache,” she replied weakly.  
  
Willow bit her lip, and Buffy knew she didn’t believe her, but her friend just hefted the book she was holding. Buffy hadn’t noticed it before. “There was a report of a Brachian demon sighting in one of the cemeteries. Spike said it was a low level demon. Just chop off the head, no big. Not apocalypse worthy stuff, unless you get covered in goo. He said it was really hard to get out of clothing.”  
  
She hadn’t realized she missed Willow’s babbling and grinned a bit.  
  
“He’s on the phone and wanted to know if he should go ahead and deal with it. Do you want me to tell Spike he can grab this one?”  
  
Buffy stared at the picture in the worn book Willow held. It looked a lot like the Fyarl demon Giles had once been turned into, but without the large horns. She really didn’t feel up to fighting any baddie, whether big or little, and nodded. “Thanks, Will. I’m just going to lie down for a while.”  
  
Her friend nodded. “Okay. Let me know if you need anything.”  
  
True to her word, Buffy lay down and sighed, closing her eyes.  
  
A gun cocking made her snap to awareness. She was back in the motel room. Dean and Sam were in different clothes and were stuffing something foul smelling into a duffel bag. Dean looked particularly angry.  
  
“I’m going to blow that son of a bitch into a million tiny bits. If my jacket is ruined, I’m going to make it hurt so much its mother will feel it.”  
  
Sam looked equally irritated, but not as homicidal as Dean.  
  
“What’s going on?” she asked, still sleepy. Both brothers looked over at her in surprise. Apparently, they forgot she'd stowed away in their room.  
  
“While you were pulling a Snow White, Sam and I just did our job and went after a monster.”  
  
Buffy sat up, trying to get Willow’s voice out of her head. “Did it sneeze on you or something?”  
  
Dean slammed around the room a bit more, pulling out guns and various other weapons. “Don’t worry your pretty little head over it.”  
  
She looked at the clock on the bedside table to see the time, but the blinking lights alerted her to the fact that it wasn’t set. Buffy got out of bed slowly, taking time to stretch her limbs. “And you’re about to go after it again?”  
  
“We have to,” Sam replied. “There’s no telling what will happen if it’s still out there.”  
  
“I want to come with you,” Buffy replied softly.  
  
“Hell no,” Dean responded immediately. “We can’t watch you and it at the same time.”  
  
It was the answer she expected, but it still hurt to hear. She knew she could take care of herself. She still had some of the speed and agility of her powers from the other reality. She could help, but there was no way to convince them of that.  
  
“I’ll stay in the car. I won’t touch anything.”  
  
Sam came over and put his hand on Buffy’s shoulder. It was hard not to flinch away, but she remained rigid. “We weren’t going to leave you.”  
  
She turned her face up to him in shock. “I didn’t even think that.”  
  
“Neither did I,” Dean chimed in, “But I like that plan. Let’s go with that plan.”  
  
They both ignored him, and Sam continued to look at Buffy in concern. “You make the relapses… smoother, when they happen at all.”  
  
“And we can’t have you relapse while we’re trying to battle something and then you think you’re a fairy princess in a faraway land,” Dean snapped.  
  
Sam stared down at Buffy, and she bit her lip. “Please. I’ll stay in the car,” she repeated.  
  
After a few moments of silence, Sam nodded. Buffy quietly slipped out of the room and to the Impala, trying to push the argument she just caused between Sam and Dean out of her mind. If she was not able to help them with this monster, she would leave them alone at the next stop they made. A part of her needed reassurance that she was still good for something in this world, but she doubted they would let her even try.


	2. Chapter Two

The trip to the wooded area where the monster was last seen was made in silence. Dean’s shoulders were rigid and the hand clutching the steering wheel was clenched so tight his knuckles were almost white. His jaw would clench every few moments and Sam obviously noticed, but ignored him. He kept looking out the window and scratching his knee. Buffy sat in the middle of the back seat quietly, and let the motion of the car and the hum of the engine float over her.  
  
They pulled over and Buffy didn’t say anything as Dean got out of the car and slammed the door. Sam winced, but turned in his seat to speak to Buffy. She just shook her head. Sam had already gotten into enough trouble on her account.  
  
The brothers loaded up on weapons and Buffy watched as they trekked into the dark woods. She scooted to the door and pressed her face against the cool glass, watching them until she could no longer see the outlines of their bodies. With a sigh, she closed her eyes. So much for being useful.  
  
“Buffy!”  
  
She shot up, but was no longer in the car. Buffy looked around at her room in confusion. Hadn’t someone shouted for her? Then, she heard someone running up the stairs and gingerly stood up. Willow burst into her room, breathing heavily.  
  
“It’s the demon. They need help, out in the woods…”  
  
Buffy didn’t need to be told twice and took off running down the stairs and out the front door. As she was running down the street, she felt something snap against her face. In shock, she stopped and held a hand up to her stinging cheek. Her fingers came away red.  
  
A twig snapped and she whirled around. She wasn’t on the street in California anymore. She was in the middle of the woods and a tree branch had hit her face. For a moment, she panicked because she had run too far from the road and was deep in the woods. Buffy didn’t know how to get back to the car and Dean was going to kill her.  
  
A shout and gunfire came from her right, and she didn’t even stop to think. Buffy took off running, mindful of the branches this time. When she got to the clearing, she stopped in surprise. Sam and Dean were fighting the same demon Willow said was in Sunnydale. That was one hell of a coincidence, but they weren’t cutting off its head. Instead, they were shooting it and being pushed back to the defensive.  
  
Their bag of goodies glistened in the moonlight, and Buffy saw the short sword Sam packed. Buffy took a deep breath and closed her eyes, gathering her strength. Either she could manage to behead the demon or it would kill her easily. Hopefully, she retained enough of her strength and agility to beat it.  
  
Buffy raced down the slight incline just in time to see the demon swipe his arm and throw Sam and Dean to the ground. It roared, and she pushed herself harder. The demon was in front of their bag now, and she wouldn’t be able to get to the sword unless it backed up.  
  
She didn’t slow her speed at all, instead pushing herself harder. Dean heard her first, and his expression when he arched his neck back to see her running at full speed toward them was priceless.  
  
With all the power she had, Buffy launched herself at the demon, throwing both her legs out. They connected with the demon’s chest and it lost its balance, taking steps back. It tripped over the bag and Buffy barely managed to grab the sword before it regained its footing.  
  
“What the hell are you doing?” Sam shouted, but she ignored them.  
  
“This thing better be sharp,” she said, before pulling it back and swinging forward with all her might. The sword made contact and Buffy knew she pulled her shoulder trying to drag the sword through the spinal column of the demon. The sword finally snapped through and the head rolled off the shoulders, landing on the ground with a thump.  
  
Buffy was breathing heavily and the sword felt like a troll hammer in her hand. Her shoulder was throbbing and she dropped the weapon, wincing.  
  
“What did you do?” Dean asked numbly as he came up beside her. “How did you do whatever it is you just did?”  
  
She stared at the demon’s body as it lay on the ground, lifeless. There was no excitement over proving herself, no relief that the demon was gone. She felt oddly empty. “It was a Brachian demon and the only way to kill it is beheading. You were just pissing it off.”  
  
“And how did you know that?” Sam asked.  
  
“It was my job to know about the demons and the forces of darkness. I had a Watcher, Giles, who was an expert on supernatural things. My friend, Willow, is a witch who also knows about a lot of evil beings. My other friend, Xander, is engaged to a thousand year old ex-vengeance demon.” Sadness rushed over as she remembered the nightmare that was Xander and Anya’s almost wedding. “Was engaged. He broke it off.”  
  
“Sorry to break up this sentimental moment,” Dean said flippantly, causing Sam to glare at him. “But I just wanted to know one thing. How do we get rid of the body?”  
  
That she wasn’t sure of. In her line of work, she never had to get rid of a body, because there normally was no body to be rid of. Vampires turned into nifty little dust piles and demons were hauled off as a nasty’s meal. “How do you normally get rid of bodies?”  
  
Dean nodded to himself. “I’ll go get the gas.”  
  
While he started to head back to the car, Sam stood and walked over to Buffy. “That was really impressive. The kick, the sword fighting, and how calm you were about it. It was almost as if—”  
  
He stopped, but she knew what he was going to say. She finished the sentence for him with a sad smile. “It was almost as if I’d done it before.”  
  
Sam had a look on his face that Willow often had when she was about to study a new spell or specimen. Buffy was a bit nervous.  
  
“You know, it would have taken us days to figure out what that thing was if it didn’t kill us. Bobby would probably love to meet and talk with you.”  
  
Buffy was instantly wary. “Bobby? Who’s that?”  
  
“He’s,” Sam began, pausing in the middle to gather his thoughts, “Bobby is a hunter, like us. Our dad died a while back. He’s close to the only family we have. He has mountains of books on demons and ghosts back at his place. We were heading back there. Why don’t you stick around?”  
  
The offer was tempting. Maybe this Bobby person could help figure out how to stop the different relapses and help her stay in one reality. The memory of Xander and Anya’s broken relationship and her… whatever it was with Spike was making it harder to want to go back to Sunnydale. Life seemed better here.  
  
“I don’t know. I don’t think Dean would like it.”  
  
“Don’t think Dean would like what?”  
  
The person of their discussion came waltzing back into the small clearing holding a red gas can. He dumped the liquid onto the demon body before stepping back and throwing a lit match onto the corpse. It was immediately engulfed into flames and Buffy had to turn away from the intense heat.  
  
“I think Buffy should come back with us to Bobby’s.”  
  
Because she was turned away from the fire, she didn’t see Dean’s expression, but his response was biting enough.  
  
“Like hell she can!”  
  
Buffy flinched.  
  
“She’s a liability!  
  
“She just saved our ass!” Sam retorted. “And saved us time researching how to kill this thing. A thank you wouldn’t be too bad!”  
  
While the brothers argued, Buffy tried to be as inconspicuous as possible. She attempted to observe the trees casually, but a headache was coming on. The aspirin she’d taken earlier were wearing off, so Buffy risked Dean’s ire to interrupt for some more pain medication.  
  
When she turned to ask, Buffy’s eyes widened as she spotted a familiar shape in the distance. The sword was at her feet and she slowly looked back up at the nearing creature. Neither Sam nor Dean had noticed the Polgara demon that was slowly creeping up on them.  
  
Buffy gave them as long as she dared before instincts took over. Using the last of her strength, she picked up the sword and threw it right between Sam and Dean and into the Polgara’s chest. The sword impacted with a loud ‘thunk’ and the demon swayed before falling over.  
  
Sam and Dean stared at the demon in shock before slowly turning to stare at Buffy, their jaws open in surprise. “That’s a Polgara demon. He has two spikes that come out of his forearms. You can shoot that one. I think.”  
  
“God, that’s an ugly son of a bitch,” Dean muttered as he picked up his shotgun. Sam was right by his side with two handguns and the two of them cautiously approached it. Sam made sure it was fully dead before pulling the sword out of its chest. He lifted up the arm of the demon and twisted.  
  
A long, sharp barb shot out of the forearm, making Dean and Sam jump back before looking at Buffy expectantly. “Told you so.” She cocked her head and stared at it curiously. “Wish I’d thought to do that. Adam would have had one less weapon.”  
  
They repeated the process of dousing the demon with gasoline, salt for good burning the demon to ash, leaving no physical evidence behind.  
  
Buffy frowned and looked down at her legs. They started shaking and she abruptly realized how much strength she’d used up to kill the demons. “Um, a little help here,” she said weakly before losing the ability to stand altogether.  
  
Dean was closest and grabbed her with one arm until he could hand off the shotgun to Sam.  
  
“I’ll take the stuff back to the car before we get ambushed again.” With that, Sam grabbed the bags and the sword and began heading back to the road.  
  
“Guess I’m not up to slayer strength.” Buffy tried to stand on her own, but she was too weak. “I don’t suppose you’re up for giving me a piggy back ride back to the car? I know I said I’d stay there, but…”  
  
Dean looked like he was torn. “You know a lot about these monsters, don’t you? And… maybe you know a thing or two about a sword.” Buffy snorted, but didn’t want to push her luck when it came to Dean.  
  
“Demons, and I’ve had sword training. Actually used one to send my ex-boyfriend to hell.”  
  
He looked a little disturbed at that. “I thought demons possessed people.”  
  
“They do,” Buffy answered. “But there are hundreds of different types of demons. Some possess, some are in their own form.”  
  
They slowly started their trek back to the Impala. She was glad he was no longer raving mad at her, and that perhaps he’d let her stay with them a bit longer. She could take care of herself, but she still wasn’t up to full strength.  
  
Buffy realized she’d lost her shoes in the run; they’d been too big for her anyway. The rough ground bit into the soles of her feet, but she ignored the pain.  
  
“Where are your shoes?” he asked, looking down at her feet.  
  
“Don’t know. They didn’t fit anyway. I’ll get new ones somewhere later,” she brushed him off, not knowing where she would get said shoes, but figured that there had to be some sort of goodwill store nearby. The meager amount of money she’d been able to lift off an orderly had paid for the bus fare and taxi ride to meet up with Sam and Dean.  
  
Dean surprised her by stepping in front of her and leaning forward a bit.  
  
“What are you doing?” she asked in shock.  
  
He sighed. “Well, I’m not carrying you like a Princess because that’s a sure way for me to trip and we’ll go tumbling down. Hop on.”  
  
She still didn’t move, instead staying leaning on the arm closest to her. “Look, if I don’t, Sam will bitch at me for making you walk and I’ll have to live with his whining the entire way back to the motel. Let’s go.”  
  
Buffy saw his logic, but waited until she was holding onto his neck firmly and they were walking back to the car before smiling.  
  
When they got to the car, Sam was on the phone. He looked over at them and did a double take when he noticed Buffy on Dean’s back. He was too busy staring to pay attention to where he was walking and tripped over the empty gas can in his path. Buffy put her head on Dean’s shoulder to muffle her laughter and Dean chuckled.  
  
“Classic. Who’re you talking to, slick?”  
  
Sam glared and mouthed Bobby at Dean, who nodded.  
  
“Should I just keep quiet for now?” Buffy whispered.  
  
“For a bit,” Dean affirmed.  
  
She did as she was told and tightened her arms around Dean’s shoulders as he grabbed her calves to hitch her higher on his back again. He wheezed a bit. “Damn, that’s some grip you’ve got.”  
  
“All the better to choke demons with, my dear,” she joked.  
  
Sam waved at them to be quiet, and they both snickered.  
  
“No, Bobby, it just took us a while to find the body.”  
  
Buffy leaned forward so she could whisper to Dean, “Why aren’t you telling him the truth?”  
  
“We will later. If we tell him now, Bobby will worry until he sees us again, and who knows when that old codger will drop dead of a heart attack. I pride myself for giving the man gray hairs, but I don’t want his ghost to come after me because I was an idjit.”  
  
She didn’t have time to ask exactly what an idjit was. Sam was instantly in front of them with a nervous expression on his face. “I know we wrapped it up two days ago. We ran into a little problem here in Nevada.”  
  
Buffy realized what Sam was waiting for. “He has no idea what he just killed, does he?”  
  
“Nope,” Dean replied, “And neither do I. Just whisper it to me and I’ll tell him.”  
  
“You just want to sound smart.”  
  
For the first time in a long while, she felt like she was just taking a vacation from Sunnydale and that everything in her life was fine. She hadn’t just escaped from a mental institution in one reality while her friends were trying to figure out what was wrong with her in another reality. She wasn’t a crazy girl who happened to know about demons and could talk to ghosts.  
  
“Guilty,” Dean replied, shaking her out of her reverie. Buffy shook her head with a small grin.  
  
“Brachian,” she whispered, and relaxed a bit when Dean relayed the demon name, loudly, to Sam.  
  
The brother glared at Dean. “Yeah, that’s him. It’s a Brachian demon. While we were torching that one we got ambushed by a…” Sam looked at her again, wanting an explanation.  
  
“Smack a ho,” Buffy said, trying not to laugh and remain serious.  
  
Dean relayed the message without thinking. “Smacka—” he turned his head to glare at her. “Cute.”  
  
“Polgara,” she said softly, and Sam grinned.  
  
"A Polgara demon,” he told Bobby. “Yeah, it had the skewers and everything. How did we kill it? Well, we beheaded the first one and ran the second through with a sword.” Sam was quiet for a few moments and then nodded with a sigh. “Yeah, we’re coming straight back.”  
  
When Sam said his goodbyes and closed the phone, he glanced up at Dean. “We have a problem.”  
  
“He doesn’t believe us,” Dean filled in.  
  
“He doesn’t believe us,” Sam agreed.  
  
Buffy didn’t understand. “Well, then you boys are both in trouble because you left the two bodies back there to burn into ash.”  
  
“Oh, he believed there are two dead demons,” Sam said. “He just doesn’t believe we killed them or that we’re alone. She’s gotta come with us.”  
  
Dean sighed, and Buffy felt his shoulders tense. He really wasn’t excited about her coming along, but at this point, she had to, if just to explain to Bobby. She was kind of excited about meeting him.  
  
The front door to the Impala was opened and Dean turned around so Buffy could get in. She looked at the front seat strangely as she was slowly let down to the ground. “I’m not riding in the back seat?”  
  
A quick glance at Sam showed he was just as surprised.  
  
“You saved our asses twice. Do it again, and you can drive the car for all I care.”  
  
Buffy was pretty sure after seeing her behind the wheel for five minutes, Dean would rather drive the car off a cliff than let her drive again, but she didn’t say anything, not even when Dean smirked as Sam folded himself into the back seat. It would be a few days until they reached Bobby’s place, and she would enjoy the front seat while she still had it.  
  
………………..  
  
“You see, I’ve figured it out love. You’re not drawn to the dark like I thought. You’re addicted to the misery,” Spike said, his eyes glistening with disdain.  
  
Buffy curled up in the corner of the motel room, ignoring Dean and Sam’s shouts of surprise. One moment, she’d been drinking hot tea, lounging on the bed, and the next, the visions were filtering through again. This was more vivid than the one before, though. Normally, she caught herself saying something to Sam or Dean, and looked over to see Willow or Dawn looking at her strangely.  
  
This relapse was the most realistic. Buffy was sitting on her bed, staring at Spike as he talked. While she stared at him in silence in Sunnydale, in this reality, she was breaking down.  
  
“I’ll tell them, I’ll tell them!” she shouted into the room. She’d do anything to make the memories stop, but they kept coming. At least at the institute the drugs kept her mostly in Sunnydale. Now that she was away from the medications, the reality of Sunnydale and the reality of this new life with Sam and Dean were blurring together, like colors of a rainbow. Buffy wished she could just pick one and stay there.  
  
“Either way, you’d be better off for it. But you’re too twisted for that.”  
  
“Dude, she’s been going off the reservation more and more. We’ve got to get to Bobby’s,” she heard Dean say as he inched his way towards her. She started to shiver violently, cold seeping into her skin. “None of this is making sense.”  
  
“Twist, twist, twist. I’m a twist tie. Keep the bread fresh. Keep the bread of life. Keep it alive.” Buffy’s eyes went glassy, and she let her focus blur. A presence was in front of her and another was on the bed she’d just flung herself from. A hand reached for her, and with speed she hadn’t shown in a long while, Buffy grabbed onto the arm. She was at a cross between Sunnydale and here, Spike’s words spurring her on as she looked up into Sam’s shocked eyes.  
  
“Let yourself live, already, and stop with the bloody hero trip for a second. We’d all be better for it.”  
  
She’d echoed the words exactly as Spike had told them to her, without the accent. Her gaze caught the mug she had been drinking from, and she grabbed it. In this reality, it was empty, but Spike just left her room, and she was handed the antidote. Slowly, she lifted the mug and poured it out, a few drops of herbal tea filtering out.  
  
As suddenly as the onslaught had come, Buffy snapped out of it like she was suddenly waking up. The distorted words and voices came into focus and Dean’s face was peering into hers with worry. Her bottom lip trembled and she held back tears. This had to stop.  
  
Buffy couldn’t stand the cautious stares and pitying glances anymore. She whimpered, putting her head down and combing her fingers through her unkempt hair.  
  
“Buffy?”  
  
That was Sam’s voice, and there was no doubt in her mind. It was easier to stay grounded here, but Spike’s voice was still echoing through her brain. Her reaction was to let her head hit the wall she was next to, and Dean lurched to put his hand between her skull and the wall.  
  
She stared into his worried eyes and felt her bottom lip tremble. There was no pity, only concern. “I don’t want to go back there.” She turned to look at Sam, who was still leaning on the bed. “I want to be healthy again.”  
  
Buffy pulled her legs up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. “What do I have to do?”  
  
With a sigh, Sam tentatively held out his hand again, and Buffy took it gently. He pulled her up onto the bed, which was good because she didn’t have much strength. “Bobby will be able to help us more. He has more connections and plenty more books if those connections don’t come through.”  
  
“He's the opposite of Giles. He runs to books first,” Buffy said dully.  
  
Dean shook her arm and she felt her focus snap back. “Bobby ain’t British and he sure as hell doesn’t wear tweed. Why don’t we pack up and get back on the road. The quicker we get to Bobby’s, the quicker you get back to normal again.”  
  
Buffy let out a dry laugh. “Normal. Because after seeing what I’ve seen, hearing what I’ve heard, and doing what I’ve done, I can go back to normal.”  
  
………………..  
  
The first thing she noticed about the auto yard and Bobby’s house was that it was almost right out of a Hollywood movie death scene cliché. She heard barking in the distance and peered around stacks of rusted, crushed cars to try to see the dog, but it never showed.  
  
Dean killed the engine and they all got out of the Impala, Buffy doing so the slowest. In a way, she was nervous about meeting Bobby. It was obvious both Sam and Dean looked up to him, and if she had any hope of sticking with the Winchesters, she needed to make a good impression. At this point, she wasn’t sure if it was even possible with her relapses back into Sunnydale, but they swore up and down if anyone knew how to stay in one reality, it was Bobby.  
  
They walked in front of her, and she relied on her small frame to stay hidden behind them. Dean was about to open the front door when it was wrenched open and the hinges creaked in protest. Through the small, open area between Sam and Dean’s shoulders, she got her first good look at Bobby Singer.  
  
He was older than she expected, and had a ball cap that she suspected hid a few gray hairs. The flannel shirt was worn and had a few grease spots with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. She didn’t miss the way he stayed inside his house, the door lined with salt, and had one hand out of sight. If he was anything like Dean or Sam, he had a firm hand on a shotgun.  
  
Bobby stared at Sam and Dean carefully, and their faces gave away their nervousness. Dean moved to his side, revealing Buffy, and slung his arm around her. She narrowed her eyes at him and repeated to herself that pushing him off of her and throwing him off the porch was a sure way to get filled with rock salt.  
  
The urge was greater when he opened his mouth. “It followed us home, Uncle Bobby. Can we keep it?”  
  
Sam’s nervousness turned into irritation and he sighed, glaring at Dean. Buffy elbowed Dean and he winced, pulling his arm back. “I’m fragile.”  
  
“You’re a masochist,” Buffy retorted, immediately looking back to Bobby then down at the wooden porch.  
  
“Bobby, she’s not a demon,” Sam insisted.  
  
The older man looked doubtfully at her. “Christo.”  
  
She made a face at him. “Bless you.”  
  
Dean chuckled. “He didn’t sneeze.”  
  
“Well, what the hell was that?” she asked curiously.  
  
“He’s making sure you’re not a demon,” Sam said, and she looked over to see him grinning. Buffy rolled her eyes. Excellent. They were already making fun of her.  
  
“Bobby, just give her a beer and let’s be done with it, okay?” Dean said, stepping over the salt line. She knew she should follow to prove she wasn’t the demon Bobby thought she was, but she froze at the mention of beer.  
  
“I don’t drink beer. Beer is bad. Beer is very bad. Beer leads to Buffy becoming a caveman and hitting her rebound one night stand in the head with a club.”  
  
All three men looked at her strangely, especially Bobby who had yet to listen to her strange tirades before this first meeting. She had a sudden pang for her friends back in Sunnydale. “Um, fire bad, tree pretty?”  
  
Bobby looked between Dean and Sam. “If this is an April Fool’s joke, I’d like to remind you two fools that it ain’t April, and I ain’t amused.”  
  
Buffy stepped over the salt line and the strangely drawn markings on the floor, following Dean when he gestured through the living room stacked with books. Giles and Willow would die to get a good look at the library here.  
  
She spotted a familiar book and pulled it out. “Nifty. Giles has this one.” Before she had a chance to open it, Bobby ripped the book from her hands and put it back in its place.  
  
“That would be impossible. It’s a single volume, never copied, and I’ve had it for twenty years.”  
  
She double checked to make sure it was the same type of scrolling. “So this isn’t the book on the different goat sacrifices demons make. Does yours have page 49 ripped out too? Because it was just getting good.” Dean and Sam looked at Bobby who was staring at Buffy with a bit of awe. “It does, doesn’t it?”  
  
Before he could answer, she looked around the house. “Okay, this is bugging me. Where is your dog? It won’t stop barking.” She knew the moment she saw their faces that she’d said something wrong. “What?”  
  
“You hear a dog barking?” Bobby asked slowly. Buffy recognized the anger in his voice, and was unsure why he took offense to the fact that she heard his dog.  
  
“Buffy, that’s not possible,” Sam explained.  
  
She was about to argue that it was, because she heard it on the porch. When she went outside to look for it though, all she saw was a ghostly shadow moving back and forth.  
  
“Oh. It died.”  
  
The noise of a shotgun cocking was loud in the silent room and Buffy quickly spun around with wide eyes. Bobby had his shotgun aimed right at her, but Dean and Sam both stood in front of her to block the aim.  
  
“I don’t know what she’s done to you boys, but you better move.”  
  
“Bobby, we are not under the influence of anything supernatural,” Dean said calmly. “Buffy is the one who saved our asses twice.”  
  
“Three times,” she insisted.  
  
“What?” Dean was obviously flustered and tried to keep his eyes on the gun while turning to talk to her. “There were only two demons.”  
  
“And I didn’t help you talk down a ghost who was batting you around like a fly and holding Sam’s neck so tight he was turning blue?”  
  
“I thought you said that spirit was taken care of,” Bobby asked, looking between Dean and Sam suspiciously.  
  
“It is, Bobby,” Sam said quickly. “And it’s because of Buffy that we walked out of there alive in the first place.” He slowly inched his way in front of the shotgun completely and put his hand on the barrel, lowering it down. Buffy breathed a bit easier.  
  
Bobby obviously didn’t believe them, though. If Dean and Sam hadn’t seen her in action with their own eyes, she doubted they would believe her, either.  
  
“We didn’t know she was a ghost dog whisperer,” Dean joked, grinning easily. “We thought she only chatted with the normal spooks.”  
  
This time, Bobby didn’t look at Dean or Sam. Instead, he stared straight at her, gun pointed at her heart, and she held his steady gaze. “What are you?”  
  
“Human,” she said. “But I’m…” Buffy trailed off, unsure on how to tell him about her situation without sounding completely out of whack. “In another dimension, I was injected with a demonic poison that opened my eyes to this dimension. So now I’m caught between the two.”  
  
To her surprise, an understanding expression came across Bobby’s face. “Well, why didn't you say so?” He dropped the shotgun and glared at Dean and Sam. “If you had told me what happened on the phone, I could have had all the information she needed ready by the time you got here, you idjits.”  
  
Sam trailed after Bobby when he put down the gun and started to look for a certain book among the stacks. “That’s it?”  
  
“Well, yeah,” he replied, making a face. “You think she’s the first person to get sucked into some evil plane and thrown somewhere she doesn’t want to be? Most true psychics are from other dimensions. That’s how they see the future; they can walk dimensions.”  
  
“But I’m not psychic,” Buffy retorted. “I don’t get sucked into the future; I get sucked into my other present without warning.”  
  
Bobby looked up at Sam, who was standing over him, still looking as lost as he did when the standoff ended. “Well, don’t just stand there, you two.” He glanced back at Dean. “Get her a blanket and some aspirin and make her comfortable. Then help me get my books together.”  
  
As Dean and Sam shuffled off to do as Bobby said, Buffy thought that as far as first meetings went, this one ended pretty damn well. It wasn’t long before she was seated on a chair, a blanket around her shoulders, a mug of warm cider in her hands and miraculous pain killers on the way to easing her headache. She rubbed at her temples, but the older hunter noticed.  
  
“Head hurtin’ you?” he asked as he sat down across from her. She gave him a small smile.  
  
“Yeah. Playing host to a ghost isn’t fun in the sun.” Buffy stopped and blinked. “Well, that was rhyme-y.”  
  
Dean snorted, but she ignored him.  
  
“What did happen in that asylum?” Bobby asked, looking over to Dean and Sam, who were still pouring through books Bobby had put in front of them.  
  
“Well,” Sam began, “finding an ‘Annie’ from the institution was a lot harder than I thought it would be.”  
  
Dean leaned back in the chair and took a swig of beer he’d gotten from the fridge. “We’d been in town for two days and there were no other mystical occurrences. I cleaned my guns about twenty times. It was boring.”  
  
Sam rolled his eyes. “Dean thought it was nothing. Maybe an honest to god serial killer who got nervous about the FBI snooping around.  
  
“But we heard Buffy and we believed her. The orderlies did something to this ghost, this Annie, and she was just trying to protect the other patients.”  
  
Dean snorted. “Because that didn’t raise a red flag at all - a crazy ghost helping other crazy people.” Bobby’s unimpressed look spurred him to clear his throat and continue on with the story without the commentary. “Right, well, I thought the doctor was right. Buffy was just using her middle name to make a bad guy she tried to fight and couldn’t. She couldn’t save herself.”  
  
“But then I remembered how the doctors said Buffy used her middle name, Anne, and so I changed my search,” Sam continued, only to be interrupted by Bobby scoffing.  
  
“Fancy Stanford education and you don’t bother making sure you search middle names too?”  
  
Dean snickered when Sam flushed. “Long story short, we found out who she was, and she was a bitch to follow.”  
  
Sam grabbed his laptop and pulled up the sites he’d bookmarked for Bobby. “Here, take a look. Kathryn Anne Barlow was a patient in the 1920’s. She was murdered in her cell.”  
  
“Yeah, and it also says a fellow patient confessed to killing her.” Bobby cocked his head when he looked at the picture of the professed-criminal. “Scrawny little thing.”  
  
He continued reading. “The coroner thought the body was hanged post-mortem, and the cause of death was suffocation. Why go through with the hanging when you’ve suffocated and then broken the neck of the victim? That’s something that had to be done by someone stronger than Annie. And the break was clean, which meant experienced.”  
  
“An orderly. It was a cover-up. Annie was killed by one of the guys who worked at the clinic and they shoved the blame onto an innocent patient. That explained why the orderlies were the ones being murdered.”  
  
The two brothers sent each other smug grins which Bobby got rid of by slapping them both on the back of their heads. Buffy chuckled and shook her head.  
  
“It took you boys two days to figure that out?” he snapped. “It’s a miracle you two manage to wipe your own asses.”  
  
Buffy choked on her hot chocolate when she started laughing. Dean glared over at her.  
  
“So why now? Why did it take so long for this Annie ghost to come back and start killin’?”  
  
She knew the answer to this one, and saved the boys more embarrassment. “Annie came back because what was done to her was being done to others,” she said, her expression sad.  
  
“There weren’t any patients murdered, though, just orderlies,” Sam said, looking over at her curiously. “At least I couldn’t find any in the news, and there weren’t signs of a cover up.”  
  
Buffy gave them a grim smile. “What if Annie wasn’t just murdered?”  
  
She let that sink in, their shock and horror filling the room.  
  
“Annie’s body was sent back to her parents in Virginia,” Sam began again, “but they wanted to have it buried in the family plot in England. The ship the body was on was lost at sea and the wreckage never recovered.”  
  
Bobby blinked in surprise. “Well, that’s new.”  
  
“And also a pain in the ass. There’s no way to salt and burn the bones.”  
  
“What the hell were you supposed to do then?” he asked, irritated. “Reason with it?”  
  
When both Dean and Sam wouldn’t meet his eyes, Buffy laughed out loud. Bobby rolled his eyes and came back over to the sitting area and sat across from Buffy. “I guess that’s where you came in?”  
  
She nodded, and decided to finish the story for them. “Because I am split between dimensions, I can play host to spirits and talk to them. I let Annie use me to talk and she agreed not to kill anymore orderlies, only scare them away. Sam said he would get them legally and tip off police with the understanding that if deaths are reported again, they won’t reason with her. She’s done well so far.”  
  
Bobby nodded and sat back. “Well, with that riveting tale over with, let’s get to the current issue. The demon that put you here. Describe the demon to me. Any detail will help.”  
  
Buffy made a face. “I was never good at this part. Um, it had big bulging red eyes. Really ugly tentacles around it’s neck. Like… icky ugly.” She tried closing her eyes and remembering all she could about the demon. “It’s forearms had spine thingies, and the part of it that stuck me came out of its knuckles.”  
  
Bobby nodded and stopped writing on his pad of paper. “That’s a Bitrain. Nasty sons of bitches.”  
  
Dean looked over disbelieving. “You got a specific name out of ‘icky ugly’ and ‘spine thingies’?”  
  
The older hunter glared at Dean. “I’ve heard of it before. It was the tentacles and the placement of the skewer that reminded me, but I’ve never met someone who was injected with the poison.”  
  
“So you can’t help me?”  
  
Bobby looked at her curiously. “What exactly are you wantin’ me to do?”  
  
It was a question she hadn’t expected and couldn’t answer. The juvenile part of her wanted him to be able to throw a powder on her, say a few words, and she’d disappear back to her own reality. She’d even be okay with staying here and not flashing in between realms every twenty minutes. If that kept up, she’d succumb to the diagnoses of schizophrenia for sure.  
  
And part of her wanted to just forget about Sunnydale. She did her part, and just wanted to rest. The irony in taking a rest from demon slaying to slay demons wasn’t lost on her, but she was choosing to do it this time around.  
  
“I’m tired of going in between. I want to stay in one place and not worry about walking down the road only to collapse when I get a flash of the other world,” Buffy sighed, “But I don’t know if that’s possible.”  
  
“The, uh, doctor said that you were aware twice in your stint in the asylum," Sam chimed in. "You were half out of it two years into your stay, and then last summer you were fully aware.”  
  
“What happened during those times that you came here and stayed?” Bobby asked, curious.  
  
Buffy tried to align the timelines in her mind. “Well, the first time I ran away. I lived about an hour away from Sunnydale but came back. And the second time I died.”  
  
She didn’t look around at their faces. It was a shock, she knew.  
  
“Well, you’re obviously not dead there anymore,” Dean joked. “How did you pull a Lazarus?”  
  
Buffy shook her head. “I didn’t do anything. Willow brought me back from the dead. She did a spell, a ritual.”  
  
Bobby let out a low whistle. “That’s some pretty powerful magic.”  
  
“And she abused them recently, but her girlfriend is also a witch and put a stop to it. She’s doing a lot better.”  
  
“Wait, wait, wait,” Dean interrupted, grinning. “You said your witch friend, Willow, has a girlfriend?”  
  
Even knowing Dean for such a small time as she had, Buffy knew what he was focusing on. “Yes, Dean, she’s a lesbian. But you’re out of luck because they’re in another dimension. Besides, Willow wouldn’t be interested in you. You couldn’t measure up to her last boyfriend.”  
  
“Oh really?” he asked, laughing in disbelief. “Who exactly was her last boyfriend? Elvis?”  
  
“He was in a rock band.” Dean rolled his eyes and Buffy grinned. “He was also a werewolf.”  
  
“I would like to avoid the inevitable pissing contest that’s about to happen, if you two don’t mind,” Bobby interrupted. “I think I have a way of achieving your goal.” Buffy instantly snapped her attention to him and listened intently. “Both times you’ve been aware here, you’ve been away from there.”  
  
When no one responded to his explanation, he huffed. “So leave! Drive across the country. Hell, go to another continent. Get half way across the world from them and put yourself in a safe place with someone to make sure you’re not bothered. If you do that, the farther away you go from there, the more aware you’ll be here. The same would have happened without the demon opening the way for your mind to be aware of two places.”  
  
The explanation was so simple, yet so hard to execute. In her mind, it would be easy to leave her friends and family behind, but could she actually do it?  
  
“But how do I stay there long enough to leave? Without the medications from the asylum, I can’t control it and I don’t know when a relapse is coming.”  
  
“I know a few meditation techniques that will put you in a trance. I learned them from a dimension walker a few years back. From there, you should be able to just relax and think about either here or there and be able to go between them easily.”  
  
Sam closed the book he was looking through. “Why couldn’t she do that without having to leave the other place?”  
  
“It wouldn’t stop the involuntary relapses,” Bobby explained. “She’ll be able to control when she’s going in a trance, but it wouldn’t stop her from switching between places involuntarily.”  
  
Buffy sighed. “It’s a start.”  
  
………………………..  
  
“Now, when you get back to Sunnydale, pack only the essentials and try not to tip your friends off that you’re leaving. It’ll make it harder, and the less they know about this the better.”  
  
Buffy nodded, knowing what Bobby said was true, but it was hard to hear.  
  
“Do you know where you’re going to go?” Sam asked.  
  
It was something she’d been considering for a while. “I think I have someone who can loan me some money, and I’ll keep heading east for as long as I can, maybe settle up north.”  
  
“Then you need to get your stuff and get out of there as fast as you can. It’ll take a while to get that far across the country, and it might be hard to stay focused on staying in that reality,” Bobby said. “Since it’ll be a while, why don’t you take the bed when you go under? The more comfortable you are, the better chance you’ll have of staying there.”  
  
Bobby must have sensed her hesitation, because he walked over and put his back to Dean and Sam. “Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked in a low voice. “Once you start down this path, I don’t think you’ll be able to stop.”  
  
Buffy nodded her head. “They don’t need me anymore, Bobby. I was fine until they pulled me away. I want to be here. I need to be here."  
  
She followed Bobby’s instructions, or she tried to. Every single time he lead her through the steps to be in a trance, Dean would make a comment, right up until Bobby grabbed his shotgun, cocked it, and laid it by his side. Both brothers were suspiciously silent after that.  
  
“Just listen to my voice, Buffy. Deep breaths in and out. Keep breathing and keep focused.”  
  
She’d done a trance before, on her own, but this was more difficult. After three false starts without witty interruptions, Buffy figured she would have to wait another day.  
  
“Buffy?”  
  
Her eyes snapped open. That was a male voice, but not Dean, Sam, or Bobby. Xander was standing at the foot of her bed, staring at her strangely.  
  
“You okay? You looked a little spacey.”  
  
“Huh? No, I’m fine,” she quickly amended, looking around her room as if to make sure it was truly hers. “I was daydreaming, that’s all. Is everybody here?”  
  
It was a strange question, but Xander answered anyway. “Yeah, Tara came by to check on you, and Willow and Dawn are in the kitchen.”  
  
She nodded and gingerly stood up off of the bed. “Right. I need to talk to everyone. Can you get them into the living room?”  
  
Xander was looking at her with a worried expression, and she waved him off. This was going to be much harder than she thought it would be. “Sounds serious, Buff.”  
  
“Please, Xander? I’ll be down in a minute.”  
  
He nodded and left her room, but not before casting another worried glance back at her. Buffy took a deep breath. She was going to need it. While talking things over with Bobby, she already decided that there was no way her friends would just let her leave, especially with the explanation she was going to give. As much as it hurt to lie to her friends about something so serious, it was for the better.  
  
When she finally gathered the courage to go downstairs and face her family and friends, she nearly couldn't do it. They all looked so concerned and worried that she was sure she wouldn't be able to go through with this.  
  
"So, before you say anything, I want to get this out, and I'd appreciate it if I could not be interrupted. It's going to be hard as it is."  
  
Buffy took a deep breath and stood in the doorway to the hallway facing the kitchen. Xander and Dawn were sitting at the island while Tara and Willow were across from them.  
  
"When I was stabbed with that demon poison, I entered another reality. In that reality, I was in a mental institution. But when I was there, I met two guys. In that reality, there is no slayer."  
  
She looked down at the floor, unable to look at them for the rest of the conversation, worried they’d be able to figure out she was lying. “So, I found out that there are some hunters, a type of ghost hunters, that actually do my job, and I’d like to help them. They’re so unprepared. I don’t want them to get hurt.”  
  
Xander leaned on the island and looked over at her curiously. “Where are these hunters? How did you find them?”  
  
“Nevada,” Buffy replied, allowing truth to slip into her lies. Dean and Sam had been in Nevada, and the more truth she told, the easier it was for her to tell it. “They’ve got their hands full with some Brachian demons. You guys know how tough those are. If I can go help them, I’d feel better about it. They deserve my help.”  
  
Buffy opened her mouth to say more, but she couldn't bring herself to say anything else. What else could she?  
  
"You're leaving?" Dawn asked, staring at Buffy in panic. "But you can't. I just got you back."  
  
"I’m not leaving you, Dawnie. I’ll still be here, promise.” She had to take a deep, steadying breath. “I’ll call in and check on you. Once I’m done helping these hunters, I’ll… I’ll come back.”  
  
That was the hardest lie she’d had to tell so far, and the temptation to follow through was strong. “They don’t have friends like you to help. You guys can hold down the fort. I know you can. You're so strong, and you don't really need me right now. They do."  
  
Willow stepped forward, her brow furrowed. Buffy could see her holding back the sobs. "Did I, did I do this? Are you leaving because of me?”  
  
Buffy wrapped her in a hug and held on tight. “Nothing you’ve done has influenced this.” It felt good to tell the truth, even for a bit. "You're going to hold them together, Willow. You're stronger than your magic, and you can control it."  
  
For old time’s sake, she agreed to a night out at the Bronze. She hoped it would ease their fears and worries about her future trip, and when everyone came back to the house and Revello Drive, Buffy looked at each of their faces and bid them goodnight.  
  
She wrote a long letter explaining what had really happened with the demon, and how she was going to go away and not come back, so she could stay in the other reality. Buffy couldn’t stress how much it wasn’t their fault, how she felt she could do so much more with Sam and Dean and Bobby.  
  
Buffy crept out during the night and never looked back.  
  
……………………  
  
The gray, dull buildings tarnished the landscape. She was used to seeing bright, vibrant colors of the rainbow across the horizon - on the buildings people lived and worked in, on the clothes they wore, and even on their skin. Here in a small town in the middle of nowhere, Pennsylvania, things were bleak. The colors around her were muted and it felt stifling. She’d grown up in California, and hadn’t ever called any other place home. She’d never appreciated it until now.  
  
A breeze blew through the cracks of the windows of the small hotel room and Buffy shivered and she pulled the long sleeved shirt around her, trying to warm her skin.  
  
The view was depressing so she turned back to the equally depressing hotel room. Two small beds, a bedside table, a dresser and a pathetic excuse for a television were her only company. The bathroom was a small blessing because the hot water hadn’t run out on her yet, but she suspected that was because Angel had pulled some strings with the owner to make sure she was taken care of.  
  
This was going to be her home in this reality now. Her body would take care of itself, going through the primal needs to keep surviving. Her body would eat, exercise, and clean itself but her mind would be far away in the other reality, where she could fight because she chose it, not because she was chosen.  
  
As Buffy fell against the bed, she closed her eyes. The journey had been long and she was tired. After a short meditation, she’d be back in Bobby’s house and the boys would bring her hot chocolate as long as they were bullied into it, and she’d milk it for all she could.  
  
She fell asleep with a small smile on her face. When she awoke, she stretched, her smile still firmly in place. “I think I could use some hot cocoa, guys.”  
  
She shivered and realized that she shouldn’t have been this cold in Bobby’s house. Panic forced her eyes open and horror crept in. She was still lying on the bed in Pennsylvania, staring at the peeling wallpaper that was out of style even when it was made. Her breaths came in short bursts as she slowly sat up.  
  
“No,” she whispered. It hadn’t worked. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. She’d gone to sleep to get here and was supposed to be able to clear her mind, think of the other reality, and get back the same way.  
  
Frantic, she tried to calm down and lie back down on the stale comforter of the bed and focus on Sam and Dean and Bobby, but the connection was gone. Every other flashback had been flighty and light, but she was grounded now. It was like the tie to the other reality was gone, and she was forced to remain here.  
  
Buffy sat in the middle of the bed and cried.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know that I ended it, as I’ve been told repeatedly, at a cruel place, there’s a reason for it. This is actually part I of Sound of Madness. The original was too epically massive to do for the Big Bang, and so I worked hard and finished the first half of the story for this. If you’re fond of angst and making characters miserable, I invite you to read and leave it at that. Otherwise, I’ll work on the second part of the fic and post it at a later date.


End file.
